Innovation resistance at Metro, part 4: What flaws?

Transit

Innovation resistance at Metro, part 4: What flaws?

by David Alpert • October 5, 2009 1:24 pm

Last week, I explored some of the reasons Metro has resisted, from top-down thinking to unrealistic views of Google to myopia about revenue. There may be another factor at work: Many within Metro simply don't perceive the value of letting people use the Google Transit trip planner. After all, there's already a trip planner on wmata.com.

WMATA trip planner.

That trip planner isn't bad. However, there are many ways it could be much better. It doesn't show a graphical diagram of the route it's suggesting, for example, or pictures of the alternate routes. If you enter some information, see the results, and then decide to change your search (such as excluding bus or rail trips), when you go back to the home page, your original entries get wiped out, forcing you to retype.

When developing software, it's easy to become accustomed to one way of using the software, and navigate around the warts. If one method of getting information is easier than another, it's easy to simply start using the easier route all the time. That's fine if you're an average user, but developers have to think outside the box. For that reason, good software development includes user studies.

When I worked at Google, I was involved with creating a feature that displays a list of albums if you type in the name of a band and the word 'albums', like this. One time, we user tested the "Search Music" page, and asked the user to try searching for some artist. We expected her to type in the artist name, but she added the word "songs," and then the system started looking for albums and tracks with the word "songs" in the title. It was easy to fix this, but not something we expected based on the way we ourselves used the prototype.

For example, when you call the NextBus phone number, it says to say the name of a service. One obvious response might be to say the number of your bus. That's a "service," right? But actually, that will just confuse the system, which is expecting you to say "NextBus." That's far from clear. Kytja Weir of the Examiner told me that she pointed this out, and officials reacted with some surprise. After all, they knew to say "NextBus" right away, so it wasn't a problem for them.

Besides, why should you have to say "NextBus"? Weir asked this as well, and they replied that they wanted all of the calls to route through one place. Why? It would be far better to have a separate phone number for NextBus, which goes to an interface optimized to help you get your bus, and an otpion. The prompt could say something like, "Welcome to Metro's NextBus hotline. Say the number of your bus line, or say "customer service" if you want other Metro services."

I've avoided criticizing the trip planner too much because it's important to encourage agencies to innovate. Remember, Metro was afraid to release NextBus for even an unpublished beta test until they were absolutely sure it was accurate. (And then, when it launched, it was still not 100% accurate). It's far better for organizations to launch a bunch of technology tools quickly, even if they're not perfect, than to obsess about getting criticized for the smallest flaw. On Friday, OCTO released a Circulator iPhone app. Some commenters criticized it for being too rudimentary. Of course, more features would be great, but given limited resources, I'd much rather they released a basic app in a short period of time than hold it back for months or years until it's perfect. We can enjoy it in the meantime.

I'm glad Metro has a trip planner on wmata.com. They did a pretty good job, overall. But it still has its share of flaws. There are also user scenarios, like someone searching for a restaurant on Google Maps and wanting to get directions with a simple click, that the trip planner doesn't accommodate. And when staff start arguing that the trip planner is good enough as a reason not to keep an open mind about other technological tools, they've crossed a line.

Quite simply, Google Transit would be very valuable to riders. It would provide a service much better than what's available today. It wouldn't supplant the wmata.com trip planner, but would supplement it. That's a very valuable service. We could easily argue that it's so valuable, it's something Metro could spend money on, just as they spent money on NextBus. Fortunately for Metro, it's free. That sounds like a very good deal for riders.

You can help us make the case for why Google Transit represents a significant value add for riders. Have you used it in other cities? Post your story: what you were looking for, how you found the information, and why it was useful. An on the flip side, let's collect some stories about flaws in the existing trip planner. Did it return bad results, or did the user interface make things more difficult than need be? Please be specific, giving particular start and end locations if you can.

31 comments — Share	— tags: data openness, technology, WMATA, wmata.com

Innovation resistance at Metro, part 2: The Google bugaboo (Sep 30, 2009)
Innovation resistance at Metro, part 1: The value of "bottom-up" (Sep 29, 2009)
Metro trip planner suggests riding a bus in a loop (Aug 27, 2009)
Metro responds; wanted money from Google Transit (Dec 16, 2008)
Metro refuses to participate in Google Transit (Dec 13, 2008)

Comments

Several problems I have with the trip planner:
* It's use of landmarks is limited. I can't type in a landmark like a church. I have to first locate the address and then use the application.
* The trip planner doesn't like periods, commas and other forms of punctuation. It should be able to sort through this.
* It doesn't offer the most affordable route (even if it takes longer)
* Unless I am mistaken, the trip planner uses listed bus time rather than incorporating NextBus into the application.

by David Uhl on Oct 5, 2009 2:24 pm

people use the metro trip planner? at least last time I used it, it was incredible painful. Didn't want me to use street identifiers (ln, st, blvd). The results seemed accurate but it never understood it might be quicker to walk half a mile than wait for a bus.

by charlie on Oct 5, 2009 2:26 pm

One big flaw in the Metro trip planner is that it's hard to use if you want to find out whether or not a destination is transit-accessible. What would be really helpful is if a) the trip planner recognized addresses no matter what format I typed them in as, e.g. not balking when I give the city, state and zip; and b) if it displayed a map of the starting and ending locations, so I could see exactly where my destination was in relation to the rest of the area. Fortunately, Google Maps does both these things already, so there's no need for Metro to duplicate their work; just release the schedule data in Google format under an unrestrictive license.

by Dan Miller on Oct 5, 2009 2:31 pm

There needs to be a marriage between the trip planner and NextBus and there needs to be some sort of "cheapest route" function. This could be helpful in cases such as, say, Silver Spring to Columbia Heights where a 1-seat (+ walk) bus ride is cheaper and sometimes quicker than metro with a transfer.

The "Service Nearby" part of Metro's website actually is one of their few pluses and if they were to marry that with the mobile version (which lists next scheduled arrivals), it would be better than Google. To find what routes run from a certain location on certain days is a thing neither have mastered.

I still think competition and uniformity are the best moves, though pre-Google Transit so many agencies had (and have retained) trip planning programs that made Metro's look like Google.

by Jason on Oct 5, 2009 2:48 pm

Apologies if it's been mentioned before, but something just occurred to me. Though someone at WMATA might disagree, I think most of us would say that Google Transit has the potential to be a much better and easier trip planner than Metro's, and it wouldn't be a stretch to integrate GT into WMATA.com, saving them money on software development. Instead of trying to make money off their data in some unspecified way, couldn't Metro think about how Google could SAVE them money?

by Taylor on Oct 5, 2009 3:13 pm

Last time I had to use the wmata trip planner, I was coming from Dulles into the city. Problem is that I do not live in Virginia, and this was the first time to try this bus. I was on my blackberry and had to remember or write down various details like the names of the stops. Then I would go to Google Maps and find out where things where, to determine where I would be getting off.

Then, I found that the bus stopped in Roslyn out front of a Metro station. WMATA would have me take the train to Foggy Bottom (and then walk) or go to Gallery Place, switch trains to the red line and then go to Farragut North, from where I can catch a shuttle. Of course, with Google Maps, I found out where I was, and quickly realized it was a quick walk over the Key Bridge into G'town.

by SJE on Oct 5, 2009 3:32 pm

My favorite part of Trip Planner is how it won't let me catch the bus right out front of my condo, but insists I walk up the hill to the next stop. And trying to go the opposite direction, it does the same thing--but buses going in both directions don't stop there. Aside from these obvious problems, a map would help.

Why can't you use the Next Bus stop# in the Trip Planner?

rdhd

by rdhd on Oct 5, 2009 3:42 pm

It absolutely drives me nuts that you can't re-do the same search from the results if you want to change the time, etc. And, if you go back, it clears your previous search, making you type in two addresses again.

And, on top of that, there's no way to search by arrival time. Let's say I want to be at a movie theater by 7pm. I have to search by starting times 6, 6:15, etc etc, which is annoying when you have to re-type the search all those times.

by oldmanclem on Oct 5, 2009 3:49 pm

My gripe with the trip planner is transfer times. I manually look up the times from origin to transfer station, and then a second trip from transfer station to destination.

They seem to build in a rule that doesn't let you transfer if its under 5? minutes. If I know before hand that there is a train coming that is 1-4 minutes then I can try my best to transfer and avoid waiting 15+ minutes (offpeak).

by hmmp on Oct 5, 2009 3:53 pm

Google Transit = 00s technology
WMATA technology = 80s technology

by Jasper on Oct 5, 2009 4:03 pm

I also wish there would be an option to see all trains that are coming to the station. The PIDS do not show trains that are more than 20 minutes away.

Since I frequently use my smartphone to look at train times, sometimes I want to know if I should rush for a train that will be at the station or wait for the next one. For example, let's say there is a train coming in 6 minutes and the next one should be there 15 minutes after, for 21 minutes.

Since many times the trains are not exactly running on schedule, I've missed the 6 and had to wait 20+ minutes for the next one. Sometimes I'll go on my phone and look at stations further down the line (in the opposite direction I'm going) to see how far it is from there. Then I can estimate on my own that the next one is 22 Minutes away from my station and I know that I don't have to rush for this one and can take my time getting to the one that is 22 minutes away.

I can't be the only one that does this...

by hmmp on Oct 5, 2009 4:05 pm

oldmanclem - Not sure if this is what you mean, but WMATA does have an "arriving by" drop down option rather than the "leaving after" default.

Generally, the system doesn't seem to do that well with providing alternatives if there is a direct route. For example, I once wanted to see if it was faster from the Farragut area to take the blue line to Braddock Road or take the red line and transfer to yellow to Braddock Road. I had to plan a trip from Farragut North to Gallery Place and another one from Gallery Place to Braddock Road to check the travel time of the second option.

Also, I'll echo the other comments that having the original search information disappear when you go back to change information is very frustrating. And that having a map with the trip planner would be infinitely useful.

by Laura on Oct 5, 2009 4:12 pm

When I travelled from Adams Morgan to NOVA (near the GMU campus), I started with Google transit, but quickly discovered that wouldn't give me a couple options. I wanted to see ALL my options, so ended up having to use both systems (WMATA and Google Transit), so I could figure out the best routes and options to my destination. For instance, if I got done early, maybe the Gold or Green bus in the Dash system (I think that was the name of it) was best, but if I was running late, one of the WMATA was better. It would have been great to have them both in one place. I HAD to use Metro to get most of the way, but wanted OPTIONS!!

by Daniel on Oct 5, 2009 4:13 pm

I haven't read the other comments yet, so forgive me if this has been said, but IMHO, one huge advantage of GoogleTransit is the potential to use StreetView seamlessly to get a sense of an unfamiliar area so that you can anticipate a bus stop you haven't used previously.

by lucre on Oct 5, 2009 4:16 pm

WMATAs site is built on the assumption that you will ONLY take transit, know the various locations, and that WMATA will run on time. Even WITHIN the system, they are not good are updating delays, or give some completely unhelpful information that does not distinguish between a 5 minute inconvenience and a shut down of the entire red line.

In reality, if there is a delay, I might make another choice, like walking. If its really bad, take a cab.

All in, its more of a headache to use Metro, which I why I ride my bike now.

by SJE on Oct 5, 2009 5:08 pm

@ SJE

Updates on delays you joking right; there website is almost never updated except for the front right side. If you go to any part of the site beyond the home page you find a bunch of crap from 2000-2008.

Metro service status pretty much stays on delayed unless there is a major problem which they cant hide.

If your looking for bus info your better off going to a station and getting a schedule or just going to a bus stop and find out what happens the whole bus section never gets updated.

Metro fare section is never updated before a fare change happens its always after the fact.

by Kk on Oct 5, 2009 11:39 pm

I recently flew to Denver and used Google Transit to help me navigate my way to my brother's house in Evergreen (a long way away from the airport).
It had its bugs, also--particularly in terms of making me make several transfers without giving me the option of walking a little ways.
However, the map really helps. Then I was able to compare with the RTD bus schedules on line and devise my best strategy.
I will say this: it never occurred to me to even look to see if RTD had a trip planner on line. I immediately went to GT. People traveling to DC are very likely to do the same thing--look for GT first--and then be disappointed to not find it. Perhaps they won't even bother trying to take the train or bus.

The WMATA trip finder is awful. I never never never rely on it by itself. It needs an enormous dose of artificial intelligence to make it more than just a helpful tool to combine with others like the printed schedules. I'm in the camp that says we should let Google spend the development money and just piggyback on their efforts here. Why is WMATA married to their trip planner? It costs money to develop and maintain and provides no revenue. Bag it, let GT get more people on the vehicles, and reap the bennies that way.

by Steve O on Oct 5, 2009 11:48 pm

I am a huge fan of Google Transit and Google Maps in general. I was living in downtown Boston when it first came out in Boston, and it was like a breath of fresh air. Now I live in downtown Chicago and use it all the time. It provides accurate directions integrated with the L, Metra, and CTA buses, and I can compare driving and walking directions with a single click.

The killer feature for me, though, now that I have an iPhone, is that I can easily look up directions on the go as well.

I will be living in DC next summer, and I'm dreading the loss of Google Transit. I visited last August for several days and had a horrible experience trying to use the WMATA trip planner.

The other thing that the CTA is doing very well is providing a mobile web site with accurate times for buses. The buses are transmitting their coordinates now, so the web site shows actual arrival times and not just whatever the schedule says it is supposed to be. Love it! Now I know whether it's worth the wait at any bus stop.

Here's hoping that DC wises up and gets with the program before next summer!

by Corey on Oct 6, 2009 12:30 am

P.S. As one of the earlier commenters hypothesized, I did simply assume that DC was hooked into Google Transit and was horribly confused when I tried it because bus routes and commuter rail routes appeared to be included but not Metro, which is what I was expecting to use while I was there.

by Corey on Oct 6, 2009 12:36 am

Google Transit got me through a trip to Pittsburgh a couple weeks ago and it helps that the trip planner on the Port Authority's website is something so broken it makes WMATA look like Google. Coupled with that their Twitter feed is used for actual customer service rather than an RSS simulcast, it made my transit experience there great.

Their fare system may be prehistoric (zone charges, tickets, no plans for a smart card) and their light rail headways suck on Sundays, but I would gladly give up my SmarTrip for WMATA to do those two simple things that elude them. What did we do to end up with such an anti-rider agency?

by Jason on Oct 6, 2009 9:07 am

A couple people already mentioned the trip planner's inability to remember previous locations/searches - really irritating. Especially since the trip planner's logic is so strange sometimes you have to game it with different departure/arrival times or travel options in order to get the info you're actually after. The interface has a "remember location" checkbox, which doesn't do anything on my machine, which suggests to me that they are trying to implement a remember locations feature or they have but it doesn't work (or they have but it only works on IE). And what makes this issue even more irritating is that the location I most commonly search from (my office) is located on a street name (Maple Ave) that is in multiple jurisdictions. The planner rejects you if you try to put in a city name in the address, and then it subjects me to lengthy prompts on specifying which jurisdiction, further compounding the frustration of having to go back and reenter locations to try a different route/time.

This is a case of seeing how users (me and at least two more above) actually use the trip planner. Sometimes I do actually want to plan a trip somewhere I've never been. But more often I'm actually trying to quickly query route schedules and confirm route choices.

by James M on Oct 6, 2009 10:37 am

The map in Google Transit makes it infinitely more useful than WMATA's trip planner. I use Google Transit in Baltimore. I don't know every street by name in either Baltimore or D.C., and when I see text instructions in the trip planner I don't get much sense of where I am and what options I might have. With Google Transit, I can see where the route is they're suggesting, and immediately see if I can skip a transfer by walking a few blocks. I used Google Transit to plan a trip from home to a friend's house. I could see on the map that the bus route passed close to the train station, so I knew I could take the same bus if I ever wanted to go to his house after returning to Baltimore on the train. The map shows me where a given bus line goes, which helps me learn the system rather than just get instructions for the trip I want to take right now.

by Joe on Oct 6, 2009 1:56 pm

Here's why I like google transit more:

along with all the things you mentioned above, it combines transit agency information from all across the US, which means that I can get directions from DC to Baltimore, and it will tell me how to use public transportation in BOTH cities.

by Zachary Hoffman on Oct 6, 2009 3:44 pm

also, google transit works MUCH better on phones and mobile devices such as the iphone. WMATA can barely even say they've attempted to create a mobile app for the trip planner, as their mobile website is barely useable.

by Zachary Hoffman on Oct 6, 2009 3:48 pm

The biggest problem with Metros trip planer is that it isnt a seamless integrated platform, and probably never will be. To be honest, its probably a stretch to except Metro to deliver such a product because there is just so involved in doing this well that it not in Metros core business, and thats why they should just let Google do it. This is a job better handled by a third party.

Metros Trip Planner does not have a very good user input system. All of the fields are there on the webpage, but they are not handled very well in the backend. Often I have trouble getting Trip Planner to understand where I want go for the following reasons:

Trip Planner instructs you to enter an address, intersection or landmark. Do not include city, state, zip code or any commas. Ive never been able to enter an address or intersection that I wanted to go to. I always get a not found result. The landmarks feature works ok, but isnt all that useful unless youre a tourist. Sure landmarks like the Washington Monument work, but the vast majority of the times that I use it there is no suitable landmark nearby, or the landmark is not at the closest stop to my destination. To make good use of Trip Planner in these cases, I need to know the names of the stop that I want to get on and get off at. That either means extensive research from Metros site prior to the trip (not easily accomplished from a smart phone) which defeats the purpose of Trip Planner, or that I have to already know the area that Im traveling to well enough that I dont really need Trip Planner anyway. To make matters worse, you cant specify a City, State, or Zip code until after Trip Planner admits that its confused. This doesnt work so well for say Maple Ave. I know right away that Trip Planner will get confused, so why not save me the time and let me put in a zip code. I know I can use the drop down menu to select a jurisdiction, but thats an extra step. Googles parsing engine is just amazing, I can type in any gibberish I want and Google will pull an address out of it, and usually its the address I meant.
Trip Planner is very picky as to how a stop name is entered. On one day I had the mobile version complain when I entered Shady Grove as my destination. It insisted that the correct formatting was ShadyGrove without a space. A few minutes latter I used the desktop version, being careful to leave the space out, and Trip Planner insisted that I use a space. Ive even run into circular errors where entering the stop name one way produces a link suggesting a different spelling. Clicking on the link produced another link suggesting the original spelling. Once this went on for ten iterations when I gave up and puller out a paper schedule. I have also never been able to get Trip Planer to recognize Chinatown, and Im not sure why. Yet Google will find Chinatown without me giving a state or zip code, and without GPS.
Trip Planer doesnt have GPS integration with smart phones. Again without this, I need to know where I am and which stops I plan to use. Google Transit does support GPS on my phone, which is fantastic. Anytime I want, I can just pull up Google Maps and tell it to take me home and it will know where I am and where the nearest stops are.
Trip Planner doesnt integrate well with any map, but it doesnt integrate with a map on a smart phone at all. Again, this means I have to know where the stops are that I plan on using.
I cant tell Trip Planner to take me from my house to a Movie Theater or Grocery Store. Google Maps is fantastic at doing stuff like this, and having a single seamless integrated application that will take me from my house to someplace that I never knew existed just makes it so much easier to use Metro. I have to enter the information once and I see the whole picture.

Whew! And that was just entering information into Trip Planner. Once Ive gotten it to understand where I want to go, I often run into the following problems getting there:

Trip Planer doesnt include information from any other transit agency. Collecting this information and keeping it up to date really isnt something Metro should be doing, which is just another reason Metro should let Google do it.
Trip Planner often suggests circular routes. One day I was at the East Falls Church Station and I wanted to go to Ballston Station. Trip Planner suggested that I take the 2B bus to Ballston (never mind that there was a train arriving sooner), stay on the bus once it arrived in Ballston. Take the same bus to Fair Oaks Mall, stay on the bus again and take it back to Ballston). Even more frustrating than the fact that Trip Planner does this, is that it isnt consistent. With the same input, sometimes I get circular routes, and sometimes I dont. I have yet to figure out what triggers a bad result. I also get amusing results such as this frequently Walk 0.5 miles from Ballston Station to Ballston Station.
Occasionally I will get the error Unable to return an itinerary late at night. Adjusting the travel time usually helps to get a good result; although I often have to adjust it by so much that the result isnt useful. I have also seen several occasions when Trip Planner will only notify me of the next bus, but not the one after that. I believe the two errors are related, and for what ever reason Trip Planner thinks that the bus is going out of service early.
The mobile version of Trip Planer only lets you chose to plan a trip for today or tomorrow. I have no idea why this restriction exists, but on several occasions I have been sitting on the airport on a Thursday thinking about a trip I was planning on making on Metro that Saturday. Figuring out how to get a useful result out of Trip Planner is actually a good way to kill time in this circumstance.

by James on Oct 6, 2009 9:16 pm

I used the google tool once for walking and it told me it would take 7.72 hours to walk from point a to b within the district. seems like there might still be a few kinks to iron out.

by name on Oct 7, 2009 1:11 pm

The NextBus system has a direct line: 301-562-4669. For some reason, this number is posted on the NextBus sign at 29th & Cathedral, NW. Most other stops have the main Metro number you describe, where you have to go through a menu to get to NextBus. I saved this number in my phone and have used it at other stops with no difficulty. Highly recommended!

by Woodley Park Rider on Oct 7, 2009 6:52 pm

One NextBus quirk: the automated voice doesn't know how to pronounce "heights," coming up with something like "HEEEEE-yites." I learned this when waiting for a bus in the direction of the Congress Heights metro...don't know if it's an error that carries through in other locations, such as Columbia Heights.

by Stacy on Oct 7, 2009 8:20 pm

Perhaps Metro is actually reading this. I called the number listed at my stop (the main number) this morning, and now the first thing the recording says is something along the lines of "To get information on the next bus says 'NextBus'". Entering Chinatown in Trip Planer also now works for me. Could Metro actually be listening to our complaints and fixing them this quickly?

by James on Oct 7, 2009 10:02 pm

Whenever I am in New York I use Google Trip Planner to time buses and subway rides. It works -- very effectively, very accurately. And it's easy. The interface is part of Google maps in my iPhone. There's no website to load, or extensive forms and toggle buttons to select.

Come on WMATA. Wake up.

by Henry Jones on Oct 8, 2009 12:17 am

Trip Planner just recommended that I take the Yellow Line from Rosslyn to Foggy Bottom. Although Metro's press release is less than clear, that does see to be a valid option this weekend due to work on the Yellow and Green Lines. It appears that Trip Planner is aware of closures and rerouting. New GTFS data was generated this morning, but I have no way of telling if it contains the detours.

by James on Oct 11, 2009 11:24 am